Myspace/Facebook

I read today that MySpace have banned 90,000 sexual predators from its website. That seemed like an awful lot to me, but 90,000 is suspected to be only the tip of the iceburg.

While registered sex offenders are required to provide email and instant messaging account info, it's not exactly rocket science to have more accounts that remain un-registered.

Some estimates say that for every registered offender using the social networking sites, there are another 100 who remain uncounted.

This leads me to consider the whole issue of the online social networking world. Should kids be allowed to be in a situation where they are vulnerable to who knows what kind of people? Are kids able to deal with interaction with someone who could easily be undesirable?

I'm beginning to think that I'd like to see an age requirement for such websites. I just don't think that interacting socially with strangers is something that kids can be preapared for, especially when such a large number of the people out there are at best less than wholesome, and at worst downright dangerous.